Earlier this week Seymour Hersh went on Democracy Now! and said in essence what J.J. Goldberg said in Washington two weeks ago: that Bernie Sanders’s method of raising money from individuals off the internet was disempowering rich Jews. And that means the U.S. may finally get a peace deal in the Middle East.

Look, I’ve been to Israel many times, have a lot of friends there, and there’s a lot of very good people there, but we all know it’s headed for—it’s chaos coming. And here we have a guy running for president. This is something, I guess, you know, forbidden—a forbidden statement. But he’s the first Democrat since I’ve been watching politics, 50—I’m old, older and crankier than Bernie. But anyway, it’s the first Democrat that I can remember that actually did not have to go to the Jewish community in New York to get money to run. And that’s something amazing. We may be able to actually change our policy and let the Israelis know that there’s going to have to be a settlement—not just divided, not just two countries, but a real settlement, a peace settlement, in that area.

And we’ve seen some terrific changes happening in this election, as the Democratic Party has been moving to the left, with a lot of contempt for the way the party manages itself, by the people who are pro—working—are interested in Sanders, that look at the chaos on the right. Our system is basically breaking apart right now in this election. And you can only say, “Yay! It’s great!” So, it’s inchoate. It’s not very good. It’s a little bit like the new generation of journalism we have with the tweeting and—you know, and blogging, that’s going to clearly replace the newspapers, which are dying as we sit, every day. It’s all sort of a new world coming.

So to be clear: were it not for the role of Jewish money in the American political process, there would have been a peace settlement before now in Israel and Palestine. And that’s a “forbidden statement.”

And: Isn’t it great to hear an old-school print guy not pissing on internet journalism, but celebrating it for the great liberation it is?

“There was a vote in the Senate today. Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq resolution, has authored another resolution, and it is essentially a fig leaf to let George Bush go to war with Iran. And I want to congratulate Biden for voting against it, Dodd for voting against it, and I’m ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it. You’re not going to get another shot at this, because what’s happened, if this war ensues, we invade, and they’re looking for an excuse to do it. And Obama was not even there to vote.”

Asked for his interpretation of the politics, Hersh said:

Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let’s not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it’s as simple as that. When you’re from New York and from New York City, you take the view of — right now, when you’re running a campaign, you follow that line. And there’s no other explanation for it, because she’s smart enough to know the downside.

These comments resonate with J.J. Goldberg’s statement in the Sixth and I Synagogue 2 weeks ago:

[Of the top 14 givers on the Democratic side] There was one non-Jew who was giving big money to the Democrats. That’s gigantic in the terms of American politics. If Bernie Sanders sets a new model, then this may change, and the weight of Jews in the political system may go down.

I started as a finance director. I worked for candidates in the 90’s as their finance director. And I would come on a congressional race, I am a twenty-something kid who also knows nothing beyond the state borders, let alone overseas, and you thought about where you are going to go to raise the money that you needed to raise to win a race. And you went to labor, you went to the choice community, and you went to the Jewish community. But before you went to the Jewish community, you had a conversation with the lead AIPAC person in your state and they made it clear that you needed a paper on Israel. And so you called all of your friends who already had a paper on Israel – that was designed by AIPAC – and we made that your paper.

And finally, note that this balance of power is changing, as even Schriock has said; and a symptom of that is the fact that Jamie Raskin was a progressive candidate in the Democratic race to replace Van Hollen and he won (over a very rich person and Chris Matthews’s wife Kathleen). Raskin said the usual pap and sap about Israel, but his father founded the Institute for Policy Studies, and I’m told Raskin knows the story. The public face of American Jews is changing; and that’s something else Hersh was touching on.

P.S. Hersh writes investigative pieces for U.S. publications, the New Yorker in recent years. Why has The New Yorker never assigned him a piece on the Giant Corruption he is describing?

Giving for the causes you believe in is not corruption, and the idea that but for political giving by American Jews, we would have had a deal, is the usual naive BS. The Palestinians aren’t innocents who lack any agency, and the Jews are not the only Americans. A majority of Americans support Israel.

hophmi — yes, perhaps a majority of Americans “support Israel”, but all they really know about Israel is that a vast majority of politicians and most of the American MSM say nothing but good about Israel.

My bet: that as the censorship “rules” in USA’s media and political theater loosen up a bit, and there is more talk about Israel’s war crimes and oppression of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing at the beginning (1948) and the refusal to readmit the people expelled (1948-present), Americans will change their mind — at least as far as supporting Israel in its every demand.

Would you recommend that we try the experiment? A lot of truth telling in MSM? Israel and its friends can tell all about the holocaust, of course, and the Palestinians and their friends can tell all about what Israel has done. Fair?

Yep, this is what happened to me. Jimmy Carter wrote his book, and I saw his interviews. Jimmy Carter tries to be a good person, more so than most people I’ve ever seen, so I paid attention to what he said. Looked into things myself…and realized how much money America is giving Israel. Met an actual Israeli. All this really opened my eyes. And my family’s as well.

If you listen closely, you can pick up things in the regular news. It was a line at the end a report by Scott Pelley on the CBS evening news that mentioned that Israel gets 3 billion dollars a year annually from the US. That’s more than any other country in the world. Or something to that effect–that made me sit up and listen.

When I really started paying attention to news about Israel, I started noticing little lines like that. But it’s easy to ignore. I think most people are so used to all “those folks just keep fighting” stories that they just tune out.

many because people like you force feed them lies. if one side is always portrayed as innocent and one as always evil who do think people are going to side with? you keep repeating that like there has been some sort of nuetral info stream and they just choose to support israel. there has been a distorted information given to ensure that. you ignore that because your dishonest.

For now, yes. However, as average Americans continue to learn the ugly truth about Israel, which is now easy to do, the “special relationship” will deteriorate and eventually end.
The bottom line is that Israel is an increasingly heavy millstone around America’s neck and a useless “ally.” The handwriting is on the wall.

“Der Spiegel reports senior officials in the German government believe Netanyahu is ‘instrumentalizing’ Berlin’s friendship, while the magazine quotes Merkel as saying she understands ‘why President Abbas continually seeks out the Security Council.’ ”

“Senior politicians of both ruling parties, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the joint Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union, told Der Spiegel that there is a concern in Berlin that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ‘instrumentalizing’ Germany’s friendship. ”

“‘Israel’s current policies are not contributing to the country remaining Jewish and democratic,’ Norbert Röttgen, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told the weekly.

“According to Der Spiegel, an evidence of a change in the German Foreign Ministry’s attitude towards Israel is the refusal of then-foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to grant Netayahu’s request to raise objections to a document authored by the EU’s foreign ministers that criticized the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. ”

“Steinmeier, however, ignored the Israeli prime minister’s pleas and threw Germany’s support of the EU document, which states that ‘Settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible.'”

“According to the weekly, this incident points to the weakening influence of Israel’s friends within the German Foreign Ministry.

“The Chancellery has also reportedly lost hope that Netanyahu would work to advance the peace process.”

PHIL- “…Bernie Sanders’s method of raising money from individuals off the internet was disempowering rich Jews.”

Jeez, is there no straw so tiny and insignificant that you will not grab it, wave it around while jumping up and down declaring victory just around the corner? Phil, I hate to break it to you but this is capitalism, disempowering money is inconceivable. In the last 10 years, the rich have gotten a lot richer, and these rich Jews are more powerful than ever. Bernie’s success was primarily a consequence of discontent among the 99%, which has been subverted by “the Bern.” The Democratic party is the graveyard of progressive activism.

Keith –certainly the organized, long-entrenched, power-wielders among the Democratic Party are not (to say the least) a suitable substrate for progressive activism. Hillary is one of them, a good example. In bed with the oligarchs, plays the neoliberal games like a violin.

For that reason (and, of course, in expectation of his losing), supporters of sanders are suggesting he run for President on the Green Party line, leaving the Trump/Clinton race to be won by whoever is less despised by the most voters — and in his dust (as they hope or imagine).

The Dems would rather lose than move left to join the vanguard — the people. (“Better dead than red”, so to speak).

In fact, there is a moment of “disempowerment” in that system for raising money within a totally corrupt electoral system.
If, as the BSanders campaign has shown, it is possible to raise enough money to get nearly nominated by the “party” machines, it ensues that it has become harder, or more expensive, to buy candidates and write one’s own laws outright. Not prohibitive, but makes it harder.

Bernie was just following in Ron Paul’s footsteps. Ron Paul raised a lot of money on the internet from small contributions. Perhaps we can look forward to more of this marginalization of the oligarchs through grass roots donations. I sure hope so.

Eg: Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski – who backed Obama’s Iran deal – retires, Donna Edwards lost the race for that seat against the Israel lobby. So, to me it looks like the Israel lobby just got stronger.

Bernie Sanders mounts a fine insurgent campaign against Wall Street and the Israel lobby, but he’s 300 delegates behind. So, if Wall Street and the Israel lobby manage to install their horse Hillary at the white house, how much will be left of the current uprising against the Zionist war lobby?

Will the campaign of Bernie Sanders transform into a movement, bringing about change after the election even if HIllary will be president, or will it dim out? And even worse can be imagined of Trump’s insurgent campaign: even if it may stay it may become a new powerful part of the Zionist war lobby.

Great interview. However he went on a bit about Bernie not demonstrating enough knowledge about foreign policy to make him feel “comfortable” or something like that. As if Clinton’s foreign war hawk policies would make one feel “comfortable” unless you are part of the PNAC war team.

That’s because Sanders does not know and no one on his team knows that the 1992 Ukraine Constitution gave Crimea the legal right to decide its own future. (Obama’s national security infants don’t know this either.)

The new Constitution written in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, granted Crimea effective independence within Ukraine and the legal right to determine its own path and relations with others, including whether it wanted to stay with the Ukraine or return to Russian rule. The decision would be made by referendum, which Crimea exercised in March 2014. Legally.

“The Palestinians aren’t innocents who lack any agency, and the Jews are not the only Americans. A majority of Americans support Israel.”

Who said the Palestinians were innocents? Where is that in the text?
Bear in mind that the slaves in the antebellum South who revolted and rebelled were often not “innocents”: did that make their struggle for liberation immoral, insupportable or unjust? Were the South African, Vietnamese, Lenne Lenape or Irish who fought against their oppressors “innocents”? And if innocence is the standard by which we are to judge the quality of a people’s legitimacy…what does the cold-blooded murder of an incapacitated Palestinian by an Israeli military medic, Elor Azarya, say about Israel’s innocence or claim to be “the most moral army in the world”?

And yes, you are correct when you say that polls consistently show that when Americans are asked if they “support Israel” the resulting numbers are often 60%+ in the positive. But let’s ask a different question, one that might produce a more relevant result: let’s ask mainstream Americans if they support Zionism. My guess is that most would stare back blankly at the pollster and not even know how to answer. Do you have any idea what that would indicate? Care to take a stab at that?

Hophmi it should tell you something about the quality of your analysis if you have to continuously resort to meaningless comparisons and unsubstantiated moral judgements and take comfort in more-or-less meaningless polls to “stand up for Israel”.

Was a time when to be an Israeli was something Israelis bragged about. No more. When a giant like Sy Hersh says “it’s chaos coming” wise people would would re-think and perhaps even alter course.

View a brand new poster on Palestinian-Black American intersectionality:

The average American knows virtually nothing about Israel except “It’s surrounded by a sea of Arabs who want to push it into the sea.” They’ve been educated since grade school on Ann Frank, and never heard of Rachel Corrie, let alone the Nakba or the term “illegal settlements.”

Most never heard the term Zionist or Zionism either. Nor do they know that Israel takes the biggest of chunk of total US foreign aid tax dollars every year.

Let’s just ignore “Hophmi.” He never ever responds to any of the cogent arguments made against his crap. He just waits until an opportunity arises to repeat the same crap. If we ignore him he’ll get bored and go away.

Were all dust in the wind. But the parents, as do Hophmi’s I assume, still think they educated moral children, and with my rents, maybe they did, but they’re not nationalists. I’d rather be on the correct side of this one when it all goes down. Whatever that means. My dad probably liked Israel but to say he loved it is silly. It wasn’t that important to him, basic social work was. But, as the last statement says, he wouldn’t be focused on their crimes if you brought up the subject, but he was aware of the crimes. When I think Israel I think Apartheid and so much more. Its worse than just apartheid. I guess My Jewishness is like Bernie’s. Were Polish…..and Russian, it changes minute to minute. We weren’t raised to like injustice and apartheid, so we don’t. My parents knew a ton about all our wars from Nicaragua to Haiti etc, but were from Boston. Most people know nothing and don’t want to know anything. So Hophmi is like people we know, but we are also Jews, always will be and we have zero in common, ideologically, with people like that, who are essentially trying to tell us what is wrong is right, up is down, whatever, he can try I suppose.. Its like shoveling water.

Phil, I honestly think you have been going off the rails lately. Not with your presentation of the facts about what this or that person said–those facts are important, and should be reported– but with your adoption of the “Jewish money” frame. It’s an anti-Semitic frame because it identifies the money of a necessarily small handful of right-wing Jews as “Jewish” money, whereas the money of Jews who give to left-wing causes is not called “Jewish” money. I realize the latter pales in magnitude compared with the former, but that doesn’t make the money any more or less “Jewish.” I’m a Jew. I give a significant amount of my meagre income to JVP and Bernie Sanders among other left-wing causes. There are thousands of American Jews who do likewise. Why isn’t our money called “Jewish money”? Why is the money of Jews only called “Jewish money” when it goes to nefarious right-wing causes? Does that not strike you as playing into free-floating stereotypes that Jews are *by nature* tribalist, inhumane, and powerful–stereotypes I routinely see voiced in places like the If Americans Knew Facebook page?

matt: Right on two counts: the AIPAC money is not “Jewish money” (although there’s no better short label for it, unless “Zionist money”); and the money poorer folks give to Sanders, etc., is just as Jewish, but not, in total, “Jewish money” either.

When I’m being careful I refer to the AIPAC money as “the money of a very, very few very, very rich Jewish Zionists” (and collectively as BIG-ZION) — and I suppose if I wanted a name for the other money it would be “small contributions from a lot of Americans who are Jews.”

Off topic, I pronounce “AIPAC” as “A-I-pac”, not “A-pac” as they want us to do. “A-pac” sounds like A-for-America and although that is true, the “I” is the important letter and deserves to be pronounced separately. And spelling t “Aipac” as some do seems to me ridiculous as if it were a personal name rather than an acronym.

Hersh has had to publish his recent articles denying that the Assad government was responsible for the sarin attack in Syria in the London Review of Books, because his long-time outlet The New Yorker as well as the Washington Post refused to publish them.

This is why that the first real crack in democratic party’s support for Israel will be a presidential candidate, whereas the congress will lag behind. Not hillary. I predict 2032, maybe sooner. But I doubt the Bernie movement will create a grass roots funding drive. It is the presidential election that electrified the country. Congressmen still need big donors. President’s can support themselves from the grass roots.

“So to be clear: were it not for the role of Jewish money in the American political process, there would have been a peace settlement before now in Israel and Palestine. ”

That mono-causal statement is overly simplistic. Does the Israel Lobby have an influence on America’s Middle East policy? Of course. But is that the only reason there isn’t a peace settlement? No way. That ignores the role of American geopolitical interests in Middle East hegemony, promoting Islamophobia and breaking up secular Arab democracy; the role of neoconservative foreign policy hawks; Christian evangelicals; and the corporate profits of the military industrial complex. In sum, your explanation is causally backwards: there is no Israel/Palestine peace settlement because it benefits American interests, and “wealthy Jews” have an influence because they conform to America’s interests. To suggest that American foreign policy is innocent and is just led astray by wealthy Jews is flat-out wrong.

“To suggest that American foreign policy is innocent and is just led astray by wealthy Jews is flat-out wrong.”

You tell ’em! We American Jews should be proud, proud, of the patriotic way Zionism and Israel supports and enhances America’s role in the Middle East! This is truly what the liberation and self-determination of the Jewish people always aimed for, to be a handmaiden, mercenary and weapons-testing facility for the American empire. Hooray!

Um…. no. I am an anti-Zionist. And certainly not a supporter of American empire. But that doesn’t mean that the only reason why America supports imperialistic policies in the Middle East is because of “wealthy Jewish donors.”

“But before you went to the Jewish community, you had a conversation with the lead AIPAC person in your state and they made it clear that you needed a paper on Israel. And so you called all of your friends who already had a paper on Israel – that was designed by AIPAC – and we made that your paper.”

These papers all exist somewhere. Why doesn’t some enterprising journalist or blogger collect them on-line, to make them publicly available, so that all voters can see what positions have been taken or pledges made. AIPAC wants to stop the Iran deal, try to start another war in the Middle East, humiliate our President, make the Israel-American relationship partisan, let the voters know what they require in order to fund our Congressional candidates.

Have you adopted a position paper on Israel for AIPAC or in connection with campaign fundraising? If so, please share it, and, if you won’t, why not?

I believe that the perception that organized issue-focused money is effective in buying candidate loyalty on key issues discourages other givers from supporting those candidates, to the extent that they care about the issues pre-empted by that organized money. What’s the point if candidates have pledged their positions secretly in exchange for large sums of organized money backed by effective lobbyists? Donating to such “pledged candidates” just helps the organized money. I believe there is vulnerability to Hillary in this regard, although apparently not in New York. Here’s an indication Sanders could win in California: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/05/01/463482/Sanders-poll-Political-Analyzer/

Hersh is a brave man and a good man, but (it appears, see below) not a perfect man — his reporting appears to be flawed by failure to knock the USA as hard as it deserves. Of course, that could be because of the troubles of getting publishers to venture to print EVEN as much as he has been reported on in this post.

QUOTE: The interviewer asked why Obama is so obsessed to replace Assad in Syria, since «The power vacuum that would ensue would open Syria up to all kinds of jihadi groups»; and Hersh replied that not only he, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff, «nobody could figure out why».

He said, «Our policy has always been against him [Assad]. Period». This has actually been the case not only since the Party that Assad leads, the Ba’ath Party, was the subject of a shelved CIA coup-plot in 1957 to overthrow and replace it; but, actually, the CIA’s first coup had been not just planned but was carried out in 1949 in Syria, overthrowing there a democratically elected leader, in order to enable a pipeline for the Sauds’ oil to become built through Syria into the largest oil market, Europe; and, construction of the pipeline started the following year.

But, there were then a succession of Syrian coups (domestic instead of by foreign powers – 1954, 1963, 1966, and, finally, in 1970), concluding in the accession to power of Hafez al-Assad during the 1970 coup. And, the Sauds’ long-planned Trans-Arabia Pipeline has still not been built. The Saudi royal family, who own the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, don’t want to wait any longer.

Obama is the first US President to have seriously tried to carry out their long-desired «regime change» in Syria, so as to enable not only the Sauds’ Trans-Arabian Pipeline to be built, but also to build through Syria the Qatar-Turkey Gas Pipeline that the Thani royal family (friends of the Sauds) who own Qatar want also to be built there. The US is allied with the Saud family (and with their friends, the royal families of Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Oman). Russia is allied with the leaders of Syria – as Russia had earlier been allied with Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, and Yanukovych in Ukraine (all of whom except Syria’s Ba’ath Party, the US has successfully overthrown).

Hersh was wrong to say that «nobody could figure out why» Obama is obsessed with overthrowing Assad and his Ba’ath Party, even if nobody that he spoke with was willing to say why. They have all been hired to do a job, which didn’t change even when the Soviet Union ended and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded; and, anyone who has been at this job for as long as those people have, can pretty well figure out what the job actually is – even if Hersh can’t.

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